Each year, to celebrate the arrival of spring, my family enthusiastically anticipates my global buffet with all the trimmings. On second thought, it's more like suspiciously anticipates. Oh, it's not that they don't have a good time; it's just that they never know what might be on the menu.
Being a restaurant consultant with over 3,000 recipes at my fingertips (and hundreds more procured each year), I'm usually a lazy, unconcerned cook when cooking for just me; so I bankroll all my creative efforts in this one, belt-busting extravaganza.
Peeking out the window at the entourage getting out of their cars, I can see their faces have that look that deer get just before the hunter bada-bings them right between the eyes. Anyway, in they shuffle, sniffing the air for signs of foreign spice.
One year, I made a Moroccan lamb tangine with preserved lemons. My sister Paula sat in the bathroom and cried at the thought of some little lamby being slaughtered. Of course, veal's off the menu since she read that it comes from little calves, which are held prisoner in pens from birth. Talk of trying venison was quickly tabooed as my 6-year-old niece wailed, "You'd eat Bambi?????"
Now that Babe is part of one niece's DVD collection, pork is passé. And then the Chicken Little movie came out…
I'll admit, I do use these buffets as a sort of launch pad for recipes about which I'm curious. Like the now infamous spicy cornbread-bean torte: a skyscraper of Mexican ingredients baked in a springform pan, and which, when sliced, looks like a seven-layer cake. That went over like ptomaine poisoning, and most of it was fed to the birds. But even the pigeons were hesitant.
Who could forget the fresh-roasted pumpkin lasagna? (My nieces looked at each other in curious horror when they heard the words "pumpkin" and "lasagna" linked together.)
One year the weather was like summer, so early that morning I dragged out the picnic furniture and set up the buffet with my finest china, silver, and linens. Then I jumped into a bubble bath with the music on full tilt—my favorite, Vivaldi's "Four Seasons." The water was hot, I was sooooo relaxed. Suddenly I heard it. It wasn't Vivaldi—it was rain, really heavy rain on my roof.
I jumped out of the bubbles, threw on my robe, and ran out the door. Everything was soaked. That day we ate indoors by the fire. Thank you, Domino's Pizza. (I suspect that it was the best spring fling thing we ever had!)
Strangely, my 16-year-old niece, who hates to eat as much as she hates homework, has turned out to be a cooking geek, with afternoons spent glued to the cooking channel. She e-mails me weekly recipe picks, complete with her personal cooking tips. If you don't lend her your Ginzo knives, she's great; and after the cooking's done, she refuses to eat any of it! You dig in and tell her how good it is and she nods her head and says, "I know." Sounds like an $85,000 a year superstar chef to me. I'll see if I can book her on the "Iron Chef."
Humorist and freelance scribe Joyce Faiola is a consultant for the hospitality industry and lives in Connecticut. Here e-mail is JLFaiola@Juno.com
Cartoonist Bob Larsen is a professional artist in the Boston area. His e-mail is RobertYLarsen@Gmail.com
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